September 29, 2018
Written by: Rob Zombie
Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie, Meg Foster, Bruce Davison
Budget: $2,500,000
Quote: "The blasphemous music echoes in my mind, driving me to the point of insanity. I, Jonathan Hawthorne, swear before the eyes of God, on this this day in the year of our Lord 1696, to destroy all persons who choose to pledge allegiance to the demon Satan and his spectral army!"
Trivia: Rob Zombie has hinted at this film being a metaphorical and spiritual prequel to his Halloween films.
I had been up in Jacksonville, Florida for a few days on vacation and decided I would finally give The Lords of Salem a chance. Although I loved Rob Zombie's other films, House of 1000 Corpses, Devil's Rejects, and 31, I am going into this film with some trepidation. My friend Dustin loves the Zombie films maybe even more than I do having both seen House of 1000 together right after high school, but he hated this film. The responses from the internet are also mixed, with some people hating it and some loving it, although it does appear there is a move towards a better appreciation for the film.
Having watched it, I have to say I really liked it, but I would probably never watch it again. Zombie does an incredible job building a disturbing atmosphere in the film and making the viewer feel uneasiness through the entire movie. This film is filthier and viler than any other witch movie I have seen before. Zombie claimed he wanted the witch coven to resemble the Manson family girls and he does a good job capturing the dirtiness and insanity of that murderous hippie group. Sheri Moon, the main actress, also gives her best performance in this film. It is really interesting to watch her acting abilities develop from House of 1000 until Lords of Salem and beyond. However, the film is slow, the plot never really seems to move forward all that much, and there is not a lot of action to keep horror fanatics amused. The film is great, don't get me wrong, these are just reasons I probably won't watch it a second time.
The movie begins with a group of women in the woods of seventeenth century Salem engaged in a ritual. The dialogue of the witches helps to heighten the filthiness of the film and sets the overall tone. For example, "Welcome... whores of Salem! I can taste the foul stench of your ancestors rotting in the folds of filth between your legs." Much of the witches dialogue throughout the film simply is ranting about the lies of Christianity and the vileness of women's bodies. I'm not sure the overall point, but it certainly strikes a chord and makes for an unpleasant viewing experience.
Jump forward a little over three hundred years and now we're following the story of Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie) a Salem radio DJ and recovering drug addict and her two cohosts. Sheri Moon is an extremely beautiful actress but they do a really great job of masking that beauty in this film giving her frumpy 1970s era clothes and unflattering dreadlocks. One day at the radio station, Heidi receives a box with a record from a group called The Lords, after she plays it at her house she has visions of the Salem witches ritually birthing a child and then damning the child by spitting on it. The vision stops when the record stops but the next day they decide to play it over the air entrancing a whole town of women. The music is this odd droning sound that I did not recognize until looking at the soundtrack list and seeing The Velvet Underground's All Tomorrow's Parties. They play another Velvet Underground song in the film and I couldn't believe Zombie was able to slip this one past me.
From here, it is a gradual increase in the possession of Heidi that the Salem witches have over her. The neighbors downstairs appear to be part of some cult and after another uncomfortable exchange (The wicked thoughts burning inside your head and exploding in the juices between your legs. The darkness within your very soul. The only reason you exist.), Heidi enters what she thought was an empty hotel room only to experience a demonic vision of a monster and a nude women who command her to "bleed us a king." Later Heidi has a vision of being sexually assaulted by a priest and eventually relapses and begins smoking heroin.
Meanwhile, Francis Matthias, an archaeologist that Heidi had on her radio show begins researching the record and discovers that one of Heidi's ancestors killed the original witches of Salem, but not before a curse was put upon him and his bloodline. Before Matthias can warn Heidi, her neighbors kill him during yet another disgusting dialogue ("I think you've come here to get inside my dear little Heidi's head. Get inside her head and fuck her brain. Have you come here to stick your nosy cock inside her head and fuck her brain, Mr. Matthias?"). The dialogue really does help create that disturbing atmosphere to the film. The film ends with Heidi and the possessed women of Salem attending a free concert by the Lords of Salem (the band(?) that created the record). During a satanic ritual as the women play the music from the record live, the women of Salem strip off their clothes and Heidi give's birth to a demon fish monsters thing. The next day it is reported that there was a mass suicide at the concert and Heidi is missing.
The visual elements in the film also really add to the over mood of the film. The hallucinatory sequences in the "abandoned" apartment room add a surreal element to the story and help to make this a supernatural film. There are also unsettling visual moments that Zombie inserts into the film to make the audience uncomfortable (think The Exorcist). At one moment when Heidi goes to get something to eat, the light from the refrigerator reveals the dead corpse of a woman standing in the kitchen. Heidi doesn't notice it, but the viewer surely does. The second time Heidi enters the abandoned room she is transformed to a beautiful opera house. The beauty of the scene is contrasted to the demon that Heidi walks up to that shoots its tentacle appendages at her and causes them both to shake while it makes disgusting sounds. I'm wondering if Zombie was inspired by Eraserhead in this part, not with the setting but the demon and the actions just seems eerily familiar. Also, placing the supernatural elements down the long hall in the abandoned room has to be a reference to The Shining.
Sheri Moon's performance as Heidi is fantastic. In the beginning of the film, she's just a carefree radio DJ who just wants to hang out and listen to music. As the movie progresses her character becomes increasingly paranoid, fearful and agitated until the end when she finally gives up power to her possessors, both the drugs and the witches. This feeling of despair adds to the overall feeling of the movie and hints at the movie's theme regarding fate. No one likes to feel like we have no control or that we are predestined to fail, and perhaps that's why many people did not like the film. Despair is a horrible feeling, but for many is certainly a part of life.
With only one on screen kill (poor Mr. Matthias) Rob Zombie was able to craft a dark and disturbing film. Although the story can be sluggish at parts, and if you read about the numerous production problems the film faced its easy to understand why, it really is a visceral and new look at Salem witch lore. Zombie stated that this film is a metaphorical and spiritual prequel to the Halloween movies. I can totally see it.
...what's your thoughts?
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